[Ardour-Users] Ardour 2.8.5 released

[Mark Knecht]

On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 11:10 AM, John Rigg <au at jrigg.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 26, 2010 at 10:24:19AM -0800, Mark Knecht wrote:
>> While I think the conversation that ensued me mentioning the previous
>> product from SAW was very interesting I wanted to point out that it
>> didn't really go in the direction of what I think that product is.
>> It's not as I read it specifically for mixing the audience mix. It
>> seemed to me to be for mixing the on-stage monitor mix.
>>
>> While no one wants a crash of any type at any time when running
>> computers, and crashes in front of an audience would be miserable for
>> everyone - technology providers right through to the musicians and the
>> audience, it's my personal experience when playing live was that
>> on-stage monitors systems are pretty much set and forget. They are the
>> type of thing where (IMO) an Ardour template and some digital outboard
>> equipment *might* be a great solution as it keeps my on-stage mix
>> pretty much independent of what's happening in the house.
>
> Mark, onstage monitors are almost always independent of the front-of-house
> mix anyway. On big gigs there is usually a separate monitor desk and engineer.
> On gigs that are too small for a separate monitor mixer the FOH engineer
> gets to do it using aux sends from the house desk. Personally I don't enjoy
> this, but it can't be avoided on a lot of smaller gigs. IME most bands
> wouldn't be happy with a monitor mix that couldn't be adjusted during the
> gig.
>
> A set-and-forget monitor system might be useful for a band doing small
> gigs and carrying their own PA without a sound engineer (in which case
> the FOH mix will also be set-and-forget). In this situation they are
> unlikely to want the complexity of a separate monitor mixer though;
> they would use aux sends from the main mixer.
>
> John

Say what you want but we toured with our own on-stage system and once
we got through the first few days we hardly touched it. Of course, we
had a little board in those days (I'm old) and we could adjust it if
we needed to, but we hardly ever touched it during the show. At sound
check, sure, but during the show hardly ever.

Maybe I'm too out of touch but I think a touring band might very well
like something on screen that looked like a console (Ardour) that
their stage manager could adjust with mouse, save settings, call it up
the next night and get the same results. 8 or 16 outs from a single
1394 audio device, feeds in coming from the house system's mic pre's,
and I'm done. It's a laptop running Linux, Jack and the Firewire
driver with a single 1394 multi-out sound card going to my band's
monitor speakers.

Then again, as stated earlier, I'm old and possibly far too out of
touch, but I know the technology could work the way I'm thinking it
could even if I'm not communicating it well.

I won't bother the list with the idea any further.

Cheers,
Mark